Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Six," I said. "Six corpses."

"Seven. The wounded man died, too."

I glanced around the table. No one betrayed any concern.

"I see. Go on."

"We had alerted all the outposts, as you know. No one passed by them, at least no one was seen. We turned the territories upside down, apart from that, and found a total of twenty-seven people unknown to us, mainly in the southern quadrant, where Rufio was in charge. They were all harmless enough, but they were trespassers. We questioned them and found the same thing in all cases: they knew they were there unlawfully, and all of them had crossed our boundaries at night, evading our patrols in the darkness. Some of them had been there for months. We have to do something about that— about our night defences. If ordinary folk can walk across our lines in the dark with ease, so can our enemies." He broke off for a moment, then resumed. "We now know that young Arthur was the target of the attack, and that there were twelve attackers. Seven died, so five escaped, most probably at night."

"Who were they, and how do you know that?"

Dedalus flicked a hand at me, in a clear, yet unconscious signal to me not to interrupt his train of thought. "The prisoner," was all he said. Then, taking up where he left off, he spoke again. "The most disturbing piece of information we received came from one of the boys, young Bedwyr. He heard one of the men who held the children mention Peter Ironhair—not the first name, just Ironhair. There's no possibility of error, for the boy had never heard the name before and didn't know who Ironhair was, but the name stuck in his mind and he remembered it when Donuil here was questioning him about what happened. He hadn't heard much, distracted by his mother's screaming, but it appears that early on in the proceedings, after Arthur had been laid low, the men were arguing over what they ought to do. They didn't know which boy was Arthur. "The Pendragon brat,' they called him. They asked the boys, but by then they were too late, and Bedwyr spat at them. One of them thought they should abduct all three of the oldest boys. Another was in favour of simply killing them all. A third remembered Ironhair had given exact instructions: 'Bring the Pendragon brat back if you can' had been his words, this fellow said. 'And if you can't bring him, then kill him. Just be sure you don't come back and leave the little swine alive.' "

My mind was seething now with a hundred questions, but I made myself sit still and listen. Dedalus had not finished.

"Anyway," he continued. "All of that arguing gave way to lust as soon as the others had started humping—" He broke off and glanced around guiltily. "I mean the business with the boy's mother, Julia. Young Arthur had been felled in the opening rush, struck down by a sword hilt. Now Bedwyr tried to help his mother, and broke free, but one of them caught him, backhanded, with his blade, below the elbow, and that put the boy out of things. A moment later, the other lad, Gwin, was knocked down, too, and the two remaining men left the other children there, the youngest ones, threatening to come back and kill them if they moved or tried to run away. They ran to join the others at their sport with Julia, but before they could get there they were interrupted by the sight of fresher game, when Shelagh arrived. All five then went for Shelagh, as you know. The last to leave poor Julia must have killed her, or perhaps they had killed her earlier. We'll never know." Dedalus looked from me to Ambrose then. "That's my end of it. Someone else can go on from there."

Ambrose looked at Rufio, who sat up straighter and took over immediately.

"I was responsible for questioning the prisoner, Commander," he told me. "And knowing what the boy had told us made the whole thing easier. The prisoner had been under the care of Master Lucanus for two whole days before we turned to him, and he was well enough to speak. He was. . ." Rufio paused, searching for a word. "He was surprised, to say the very least, when he discovered that we knew why he was there and who had sent him. That knowledge made him talkative . . .

"Ironhair, it appears, made his way to Cornwall after leaving Cambria ahead of Dergyll's vengeance."

I interrupted him. "What about Carthac, was he with Ironhair?"

Rufio shook his head. "I know nothing of that. No Carthac was mentioned."

"Very well, continue, please."

"Aye. Well, once in Cornwall, Ironhair made alliance with a fellow called Dumnoric, the war chief who came out on top of the dungheap of petty wars that sprang up after Lot was safely dead. This Dumnoric is now supreme in Cornwall, it seems, calling himself king there. Ironhair is no fool, we all know that, and he has no love in his heart for Camulod. He could not enlist support for his hatred of you, for your name means nothing in Cornwall, but he blamed all of the ills that had befallen Cornwall on Camulod and on Uther Pendragon, who waged war there and brought fire and sword to the whole region. 'Uther of Camulod' was the name he used most often, it appears, and he was successful. He forged some kind of treaty with this Dumnoric. In return for Cornish aid to conquer Cambria and 'win back' Ironhair's 'kingdom,' he would undertake to storm Camulod and kill the spawn of Uther, or of Lot, whichever Dumnoric preferred to think, thereby removing all threats, both to the Cornish king, since Arthur holds the seal of Gulrhys Lot, and to the Cambrian kingship he might seek to claim as Uther's alleged son.

"To hear this fellow tell it, it was very complicated, but the upshot was that Ironhair obtained a promise of this Dumnoric's support in Cambria, provided he could prove that 'the Pendragon brat' was dead. He returned to these parts, selected twelve specialists in murder, and promised them the world if they could do what he required of them. They failed, thanks to Julia and to Shelagh's knives. That's all."

For long moments, no one moved or spoke, and I gazed around the table. Donuil and Lucanus had sat silent through all that had been said. Now Donuil spoke.

"Everything we have learned, Commander, boils down to three questions. How did the word get out about Arthur's identity? I thought that was a secret. Then how did Ironhair learn of it? And what steps must we now take to protect the boy?"

At that moment, overwhelmed as I was by all I had heard, I was unprepared to answer any of those questions. Not so Ambrose.

"Well," he asserted, speaking forcefully. "One thing is certain. The boy will have to be placed under close guard from this time on."

"Close guard?" Lucanus sounded outraged. "What kind of solution is that? The boy is eight years old, Ambrose. Would you make him a prisoner for life? He is a boy, not a criminal!"

Ambrose drew back as though he had been slapped. "I meant no such thing. I merely said—"

"I heard what you said. There has to be some other way."

Dedalus intervened, cutting both of them off. "This of the secret, your first question, Donuil. It's ridiculous. There is no secret. I myself heard Connor call the boy Pendragon openly, last summer, before a throng of people when he brought the lad the ponies. It surprised me at the time, because I hadn't known and hadn't thought about it, but when I looked, I saw it. The boy's the image of his father Uther. If I could see that, anyone could. What concerns me is, who told Ironhair?"

"Aye, Ded, and you should be concerned, although the answer's partly obvious." I had not spoken for some time, and all eyes moved to me again. "It was one of our own, someone in Camulod. But the worst part is that Ironhair, from this same source, knew of the seal of Gulrhys Lot being here. That is truly disturbing, for that is a secret known, I thought, to me alone. Only my aunt knew of it, next to me, and she would never have mentioned it." I glanced around the faces watching me. "Were any of you aware of it?" It was plain that no one was. I nodded. "That is as I expected. I have the seal in my own quarters, in a leather bag with Uther's seal. I have never shown it to anyone else since that first day."